Earlier this week, Lucy May Walker, a singer-songwriter from Redditch, posted a series of modest proposals for behaviour at concerts under the title Gig Etiquette. The four subheadings for her guidelines were: 1. Don’t Talk During the Show; 2. Be in the Moment; 3. The Audience Have Not Paid to See You; and 4. Have An Amazing Time. The former busker, who had hitherto received a relatively low level of attention despite being championed by Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine, suddenly found herself at the centre of what would, until recently, have been called a Twitterstorm.
Walker’s post went viral, with more than 1.6m views. For some, the fault was the singer’s own. “You should just concentrate on your act,” she was told. Her attitude, it was suggested, was “condescending”.
I, too, am lining up to take down Walker, but for a very different reason: she doesn’t go far enough. Perhaps pre-empting the accusation that she’s some kind of disciplinarian bore, Walker carefully ensured that her list of demands was cushioned with conciliatory language and jolly emoticons. For example, her second request, Be in the Moment, encourages gig-goers to “Feel free to take a few pictures/videos of the show, but please keep your flash off, don’t block someone else’s view ... and try not to watch the whole thing through your phone”, rather than espouse the zero- tolerance approach such an egregious transgression deserves. Not that Walker’s smileys and softly-softly approach placated her critics. On Good Morning Britain, Happy Mondays singer and X Factor alumna Rowetta told her she should be “a teacher or a prison officer” – and that if she doesn’t like it, she should “stay in your bedroom, sing there and stream it”.
I’ve been a music journalist since the mid-1980s, and one thing I can say with confidence is that people’s behaviour at gigs has become objectively and observably worse over time.
These things used to be self-policing and there was an unwritten code. So, for example, if there’s a moshpit and someone falls, you stop and help them back up. If someone’s shorter than you and you’re blocking their view, you get out of their way. If you absolutely must get nearer to the stage, go round the side instead of barging through the middle. Most of these conventions simply fall under the catch-all rubric of Don’t Be a Selfish Idiot.
Being a selfish idiot, however, is very on-trend. Gigs are routinely ruined by people who will not shut up, and people who will not put their phones down. The drivers behind this are twofold: narcotics and narcissism.
The proliferation of class A drugs at gigs can’t be overestimated as a factor. It’s worse on a Friday night, and it’s not kids – it’s grown men (and it usually is men) on a night out after work, coked-up and showing off about their new car or their next holiday. And it’s no use trying to ignore them: if you’re stuck behind them, they’re the first thing in your sightline and the first thing in your range of hearing.
The me-me-me culture inculcated in us all by the smartphone is the other factor. We’ve reached the point where a not-insignificant number of people don’t want to be at the gig – they want to be seen to be at the gig, so they can whack it on Instagram. As a result, every gig nowadays is a sea of glowing screens. (I was at a Nicki Minaj gig once where someone in front of me held up a tablet that was, I swear, A3-sized.)
This is where Walker’s Be in the Moment plea comes in. Screen-based souvenirs are no substitute for lived experience. The best gig I’ve ever attended was Prince playing a secret show in the bar of the Hippodrome in 2013. I have no evidence that I was there, other than a setlist torn from the stage. And I’m fine with that.
It may seem a stretch, but modern gig behaviour speaks of a broader societal malaise. It stems from the same arrogant attitude that makes people play videos out loud on public transport. In an atomised society, all anyone cares about is their own pleasure.
This isn’t a simple old-versus-young battle. Some of the worst culprits of chattering at concerts (like Friday night cocaine guy) are middle-aged.
And Walker isn’t a complete outlier. There is a fightback happening: artists from Savages to the Afghan Whigs have displayed signs urging a phones-off policy at their shows. On the other hand, some artists are making it worse. Like Sam Ryder, appearing in a Vodafone ad where he encourages two women to take a selfie with him mid-song, further normalising the horror.
There’s one development that Walker didn’t mention. This summer saw a spate of articles about the bizarre trend for throwing objects at the stage – not as a physical heckle but as a form of worship. Singer Bebe Rexha sustained an eye injury after being hit by a mobile phone, and Harry Styles, Drake, Kelsea Ballerini, Pink, Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X have also been targeted by fan-launched missiles. Throwing stuff at other audience members is now also a thing.
In the face of such rising philistinism, Walker’s gentle approach is understandable. When I tried to devise my own version of the code for gigs, I signed off with, Break At Least One of These Rules. It’s rock’n’roll, not the ballet. After all, imposing any rules upon gig-going seems counterintuitive: live music is a space for self-expression, catharsis and abandon. But we are where we are – and so now, three guiding principles, in language more militant than Walker’s, need to be inscribed on the wall of every live venue:
1. Shut Up. 2. Put Your Phone Away. 3. Don’t Be a Dick.
Simon Price is a Welsh music journalist and author
• This article was amended on 14 September 2023. An earlier version said “The proliferation of class A drugs at gigs can’t be underestimated as a factor”, when in fact we meant “overestimated”.
